Monday, April 30, 2012

Spotflux is a new VPN service that adds something new and unique to the VPN market for consumers to choose. Aside from tunneling all traffic through their VPN servers, Spotflux will also encrypt your traffic which rules out wire-tappers and middle-man attackers from learning all your secrets. Furthermore, Spotflux employs anti-virus scanners and “millions of real-time and automated calculations to remove tracking cookies, malicious viruses, and other nasty things from your internet connection.” Spotflux protects your privacy by hiding your IP address, it protects you from malicious programs/persons who might be reading your outgoing traffic and it also protects you from Internet malware.

Spotflux is available as a desktop application for Windows and Mac. Simply install and connect - there is no account setup. The interface totally lacks complexity, save for a big green button to connect and disconnect and a smaller button at the top to bring up the Settings window. The settings dialog doesn’t contain much either - you can set the UI language, define how updates are to be installed and configure an optional proxy.

Spotflux doesn’t reveal how many servers they own, their capacity and where they are located. This might not seem unimportant for many users, but once the service gains users (it’s free, after all) these factors are going to affect every user of Spotflux. There is already a noticeable lag when surfing. This is definitely not for HD streaming, but if you just need to hide your IP and a secure connection Spotflux should fit your bill.

According to TechCrunch, the service used to be called RaptorVPN but is now rebranded as a simpler, cleaner offering. It’s not known why RaptorVPN closed shop and if the same fate awaits Spotflux, but they sure managed to convince some angle investors to cough up $1 million in seed funding.